This is a 360 degree Panorama of the Aumndsen-Scott South Pole Station, South Pole Antarctica.

This was taken on 7-28 during the afternoon at a temperature of around -90F with a windchill of -130F. The moon in the shot was only a slight crescent but is incredibly bright. When the moon is not around we are surrounded by total darkness, unless we happen to be graced by a beautiful aurora! I was lucky enough to catch this nice aurora along with the moon. The moon is so bright down here that it mutes out the sky, making shots of stars quite difficult. I have to move very fast while taking photos down here as my batteries freeze quite quickly and even my tripod freezes and no longer will rotate...

Normally I keep a headlamp with me, but this time I had forgotten it while in a rush to capture the dissipating aurora, so had to shoot with whatever I had last set the camera at, and had to hope i didn't bump the rings since i wouldn't be able to see to change anything. Unfortunately while walking out to this point to take the photos I bumped the focal ring on the lens and ever so slightly causing the pictures to bit out of focus, but the pano was so beautiful I couldn't just toss it.

These images were taken with a Canon EOS-1D Mark II at 16mm, f-stop 2.8 for 30 second exposures.

Each star stays in the own place relative to the
other stars. Planets and the moon move through the
constellations of the zodiac. This winter we have
watched Jupiter slowly moving back and forth among
the stars of Capricornus. It was the only planet
to stay in our night sky. Every 2 weeks the moon
rises, and then lingers, slowly moving eastward
for 2 weeks through the stars of Virgo, Libra,
Scorpius, Sagittarius, Capricornus, and Aquarius.
Then it sets and spends 2 weeks among the northern
zodiacal constellations. This year the sun is at a
solar minimum, and we weren't expecting to see
very many auroras. We have had a number of very
nice displays, such as this one, but they
don't occur daily, and many of 2009's
auroras were wispy lights that appeared suddenly
and faded quickly.

Spinecrawler has captured the lower half of the
sky in this full-circle panorama. The photograph
includes stars that are located in the sky between
0 and 45 degrees south declination, and those
stars are all less than 45 degrees above our
horizon. The stars in our sky don't rise or
set. They just circle around us once in a 24-hour
day. The star field does shift about 4 minutes
westward every day. Most of us don't notice
much difference over a short time, but it is
certainly noticeable over a longer time period.
For example, if you were here on January 28 in the
afternoon, and you stood in the same spot where
spinecrawler stood to shoot this panorama,
Scorpius and the other stars that he photographed
over the station on July 28 would be behind you,
and Orion would be behind the station. Of course,
in January you would be looking at blue sky and
all of the stars would be lost in sunlight.

This panorama of the South Pole at night shows the
elevated station and the Dome under an accurate
star field which features the rising moon, the
Milky Way, Jupiter and a very nice aurora. The
only way to see this sight is to spend a winter at
the Pole. The last flight leaves here in
mid-February and the planes return in mid-October.
Only a serious emergency will bring a plane to the
Pole between sunset and sunrise. Counting the
first winter-over crew who stayed here in 1957 to
the present crew of 2009, only 1267 people have
spent a winter at the South Pole.